Tuesday, January 4, 2011

ALL OF THE ALTS

Anyway.. Lately i've been reading a lot of the backlog of Hyperbole and a Half... I literally can't be upset at anything when I read her shit, but I digress. That's what inspired the title of this blogpost. I actually had some more useful-type shit slated to post, but I had a lot of brain stagnation that kept me from fleshing it out properly... I still plan on writing it, I just need to unfog my brain. Not sleeping on a regular schedule will really screw with me.

So, i've been doing a lot of alting lately. I haven't been able to stabilize my schedule to the point of where I can run heroics with my guildies as much as I like. Working overnights sucks you guys.. argh. anyway. I can't even decide on one alt to play over the others, but right now it's mostly been my priest. I levelled as disc until I hit.... 32? I think that's what level you get Shadow Word: Death, and that seemed like a great time to dual spec (bwahaha only 10 gold now) shadow, and try it out.

So, I had a kind of vague idea of what I was going to post, but a discussion JUST popped up on twitter that gave me something a little more interesting to talk about. I want to thank Oestrus (who blogs on World of Matticus and Divine Aegis) for the idea. Inititally her and I had discussed something else, but we had a brief discussion on twitter about whether 10-man and 25-man raids should be held on the same progression chart. She said they should, and I said they shouldn't.. Here's how the conversation went.

Oestrus (to twitter at large): At risk of sounding elitist, I really, really don't like that 10/25 mans make no difference in terms of progression.

Me: How come?

O: I just feel they should be seperate. Maybe it's just old habits dying hard. *shrug*

Me: Eh. I disagree. There are points where 10s are more difficult than 25s, and vice versa. Makes sense to me /shrug.

O: I don't mean it as an insult to 10s, quite the opposite. They should be judged on their merits and we on ours. If I were working my butt off in a 10 man guild I wouldn't want to be competing against 25-man folks.

Me: Oh no, I wasn't taking it as an insult from you. But if they're seperate there will always be those who feel that 10s are inferior than 25s for whatever ludicrous reason.

O: I did 10-man hard modes in ICC for a time. It is work, absolutely. I hated being made to feel less than.

Me: Oh, I agree but like I said, there are others who will always feel that 10s are inferior to 25s if they're not on the same playing field. Hell some people STILL think 10s are inferior. Whatever to them lol.

That's the end of the conversation but it sparked a little thought process in my mind. For all of Wrath 10 and 25 man raids were judged on a seperate scale of progression, with 25's being the "real progression", such as it was. Prior to Wrath, if there was any difference in the number of people required for a raid, then it was specific to that raid, and they were all in one progression line. For instance Kara was 10-man, Gruul's Lair, and Magtheridon were 25, Zul'Aman was 10, etc, but they were all in progression, in that order. I think Wrath's way worked much better because splitting 25 man raids into two-10 mans doesn't exactly work out right, nor did joining two 10-mans into a 25-man. However, having two seperate progression lines, one for 10s, one for 25s made things a lot easier. You didn't have to combine raid groups, or split them up to reach different raids if you didn't want to... but at the same time it was still flawed in a way.

As I said before, 10s and 25s always competed with each other. 25 man dropped better loot, and was considered the "real" progression. 10 man raids were just inferior, in spite of (at times) being more difficult in one fashion or another. Mistakes tended to be more... life-threatening. Going without a healer could make some encounters un-survivable... going without a DPS could mean you wouldn't beat the enrage timer, etc. But at the same time, 25s had their own issues. There was less room to run around and avoid things (Especially range-oriented things like malleable goo or defile), and there were usually more "obstacles" (3 valks on the lich king fight) to avoid, but mistakes weren't quite as punishing. You could lose a healer and still have 5-6 more.

My point is, 10s and 25s both had their ups and downs, but 25s were held in a higher regard than 10s, and I don't think that should be the case. As it is, Blizzard has changed their focus, and made it so that neither 10 or 25 mans are ranked any differently. There are no more separate achievements for... say killing a certain raid boss on 10 man and 25 man difficulty... there's just the achievement for killing the boss, and that's it.

So, what do you all think? I'd love some feedback... leave me comments!

3 comments:

I think that both 10s and 25s each had points that were harder and other points that were easier -- for example, the coordination of 25s is much more complex, but you also have a lot more freedom of classes and compositions of groups, and more room for error on fights. I don't necessarily think one was harder than the other or should have been considered as such, and I'm actually really glad that Blizz put both raid sizes on equal ground.

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About Me

I'm a simple 28 year old game lover. I've been playing WoW for about 2 years now, and my life has never been the same (lol). I recently stumbled my way into wowblogging kind of by a casual throwaside notice I saw on one of my favorite webcomics, and now here I am.